Wait, wait... are you really serious?

Are you SERIOUSLY saying that Tarth with master scouts and stealth plays the same as the other kingdoms? Never mind their focus on smaller quicker armies... or their powerful bows... the ability to ignore monster MASSIVELY affect the game.

Are you saying that Pariden, who gains power with shards, gets an extra essence in each city, and can cast monoliths all over (to claim those shards) is the same as the others? That extra essence gives them a lot of options that other factions don't... you can gain extra mana (to cast those monoliths), or research, or gold, or enchant your fortress with powerful enchantments. Oh, and you can buy all magic paths just for kicks.

Are you saying that Altar who gets tons of influence from quests to field armies of henchmens play like the others? There's absolutely no comparison. Altar, is IMO, the most unique of the factions because you can tailor the entire army to your liking. A couple of defenders, a mage, some assassins... really, anything you want.

That, in turns, leaves Gilden, the most traditional faction, but that's because their main focus is in strengthening their basic troops (more HP, higher spell resistance, more armored).

Would you like me to do a similar list for the empires as well? Honestly, if you claim that they are practically identical, the only possible conclusion that I can come up with is that you don't actually play any of them, but rather one custom one and never bother to change and see the possibility for yourself. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, but you don't get to claim the factions as being bland and boring when you don't play them.

Wait a minute. No finger has been given to the modding community. The game is massively moddable. I think you are being overly negative and hyperbolic. I have lost interest in the conversation, much as you have lost interest in the game. Both would seem to come from a lack of balance. 

Massively moddable with the guarantee that almost every mod will be broken, with the requests modders have been making since I uninstalled WoM still ignored like practically everything that was in the Ideas thread. That avatar I'm using was taken when I had a mod better than the core game is now, I stopped playing when Stardock broke it and the modders who made it rage quite.

If I'm not the thread won't get enough replies for Stardock to take notice and bother reading it.

Good one! But seriously Stardock not only failed to deliver the game they promised, the potential for a great game is all there, just within reach, the mechanics are there for it, but Stardock it only fails to fulfill it they prevent modders from doing so.

And seriously for a game that started with Elemental War of Magic, why was the magic so lame? It's nothing like what they made it out to be.

Yes I have, you're just judging this game entirely in a vaccuum and without regard to anything Stardock promised back when they were making it. This game falls short of other games like it, and it falls short of what Stardock said it would be. The differences mentioned in this game are no greater than the differences in Civilization V. That list is pathetic.

I did re-read your post at least 4 times before I posted this and was thoroughly confused. I took your suggestion again and read it 2 more times. Let me explain what I am confused about...

You quote these games

Then go and explain why these games are more immersive than FE

Then you attempt to explain why FE is not immersive

But here is the problem with what you are describing. I for one don't know everything about these games you described, and so I'll take your word on it. What you fail to write about is the following:

You suggest there is more diversity and elemental doesn't have this diversity. This is because they have two over-arching alliances - Kingdoms and Empires and there are 5 factions per Kingdoms and Empires. Each of these factions when restricting to Kingdoms and Empires are relatively the same and so I must assume that there are few differences between each of the factions. For example, I must make sure when exploring the map that I have to avoid monsters, except for Tarth because they have an ability that tells me I don't have to worry about it. But everything else is the same when it comes to exploring because I can make scouts to ignore terrain bonuses. Of course it costs money to recruit champions to help you in your struggles, except for Altar who gets to take any champion on the map for free because of his charisma (made a reputation for himself whoring and drinkin' when he was young). But ok the rest play the same because the AI doesn't kill off any of these champions and I can recruit them and be just like Altar... Then again when I am playing a map I should choose high essence for my cities sometimes at the price of being next to a river or forest, because there is no way to increase essence on a city. There is Pariden that does this though. But really only adding 1 essence to a city is really only a minor change. I would go on, but I'm not sure what you telling me that there are only minor changes and what major changes would be? It is kind of hard to understand what you are talking about without these words defined clearly or shown neatly.

Is your only reason that you don't see physical changes on the map for that kingdom? That must be the Kingdom of Tarth because they are growing trees all over their land. That must be the Kingdom of Kraxis because when he settles the land turns to desert because that is a hospitable place to live. Is it that you want more visual cues for the kingdom on the map? This is why I'm confused. Is it because the factions mechanics are too similar or that the visual ques are too similar. The only difference is between Kingdom and Empire that way. If it is the later, why would that cause more immersion and how would that fit in the lore of the people as they have been described?

As far as I know there is a description of everything in this game and everything does have a backstory. Your arguments are lacking here and although there are a lot of suggestions on these forums what suggestions would you like to see? I don't have time to search every post and reply you've done to figure out what suggestions you would like implemented in the game to make it better, so I thought I would ask you.

Not just diversity, DEPTH, Elemental is bland, it's boring, I'm not the only one to say so lots of players have given up on this game lots of posts have said as much this is an observation that has echoed time and time again. Elemental is a boring shallow game, it's not a true 4X Game and what differences you can name are no more impressive and in many ways less meaningful than those of Warlock Master of the Arcane.

But the problem is is no real depth to any of them, and even if there's supposed to be it's only ever insinuated or some buff or debuff you don't ever see any real meaningful differences. Kingdoms are just the Cookie Cutter "Good Guys" and Empire are just the Cookie Cutter "Bad Guys". Which side will you choose Good or Evil because they may as well dispense with this Kingdom vs Empire crap and just call them that. All empires universally agree that the Titans are the way to go and Decay smells lovely and the Kingdoms just all universally agree on restoring the land how fantastically boring.

And Kingdoms and Empires play pretty much exactly the same, Empires were supposed to be territorial expansionists and Kingdoms were supposed to build city states what happened to that? So what's the real difference now you can get Golems or Juggernauts, Tarth can ignore monsters and keep exploring? Other games give differences like those too, except there are usually more differences or they're more recognizable. This game is like a dumbed down version of Civilization 5 in many ways at this point, IMO the only real strength is it's combat mechanics which get repetitive after awhile.

If you enable companies to make bad decisions by insulating them from criticism and brown nosing them while everyone who's critical either gives up or is run off you trap the company in a bubble of positive feedback where they'll fail to reach their potential and drag down the product. Without haters this industry would be a wasteland.

Starcraft delivered exactly what Blizzard promised it would. The same can not be said of Elemental. When we got Elemental, it was as if Peter Molyneux himself had been spinning tales of what it would be.

Again I don't understand it. I've looked at other posts about this and was just as confused. Some of them have given up on the game and some of them decided to change their mind about the game. I do read a lot of forum posts and do see that people say there is no depth to elemental, but what do you mean by depth? that is what I am confused I guess? Is it because the lore seems shallow or superfulous?

I am now understanding your problem between the Kingdom and Empires. You say that they are good vs. evil in some sense. But to the true point Good and Evil is a perception. Magnar taking slaves because they were slaves in the old days and are now tasting retribution for their years of servitude. The Trogs deciding that they are no longer soldiers for other, but soldiers for themselves and will rule their own part of the world with an iron fist. That doesn't necessarily make them evil. Look at procipinee she wants all to accept her rule. Well that doesn't sound good to me. Kraxis wants nothing to do with the Kingdoms because of what they did to them (which wasn't very nice) and thus he is not really good or evil.

I agree with you that they should show more diversity on rule style. That would make an interesting gameplay mechanic and I will have to ponder how to implement that in the game with mods. I do think it would be possible. Also the combat mechanics need some work, but no matter the work the only way to make the combat less repetative is to add more features, which would cause the combat to take longer. So that is a very hard line to travel there.

Thank you for these replies. I'm starting to understand your picture of the game and see what can be done to move the game in an appropriate direction.

Starcrap is such a simplistic and stream lined overated RTS for the sake of speed action and quick simple solutions.

Jez kid you don't know what you are talking about...just go play your click fest. 

I described the difference when describing Age of Wonders Shadow Magic. In Shadow Magic everything had a backstory, every unit was it's own unique thing with it's own unique description, every race had it's own unique theme, every school of magic had it's own unique set of spells and there were a LOT of spells and whole pages of Global spells that had Global effects you could see. There were all sorts of different ways to play, the game had Heroes just like this one does, each of them came with a little backstory and leveled up and gained abilities and could lead your armies into battle just like in this game, but everything else was fleshed out too.

But in this game, heroes are the only thing with any real depth, and even they're all cookie cutter. To call the lore shallow and superfulous is an understatement, all the kingdoms look exactly the same, so do all the empires, the minor differences afforded by traits to gameplay mechanics for some of the factions amounts to the same sort of buff or debuff you would get in a similar game, only in those other games you get a lot more than that single buff or debuff. Everything looks and feels different, that's something that's impossible to describe or understand from a purely mechanics perspective, but Shadow Magic has something this game is clearly painfully lacking.

Which is why having all the empires have the exact same aesthetics and theme is a problem. They're all identical in every way except a buff or debuff and maybe a special unit, they all love blighted landscape they all think the Titans are awesome and any real differences between them are only hinted at in their description and never really seen. This is an area where a massive amount of potential is simply being wasted, everything is there for something interesting, but it stops before getting there.

This was one thing that annoyed me about the original game, Stardock described them as if they would be more diverse then the game comes out and they're all identical, all empires are represented by darkness and corruption and all kingdoms are represented by light and renewal and why not just call it Good and Evil if they're going to do that?

So many deep complex games you can say are "bland" and "boring"  over and over again like you have and to say its shallow and has too many mechanics is contradictory. 

I've provided all the context I need to justify the statement. 

Mechanics alone do not make a good game. Your OS has a ton of mechanics and you don't play it, you use it to access other things.

So your major complaint after sifting through all your arguments is that the game doesn't have enough altering visuals for an imersive experience. Thus, to make this game `better' for you, would be to add more unique spells to each race. Provide different environments for each race, provide a UI that is uniquely formed for each race. Provide unique looking buildings for each factions / race in the generic game. Thus, you have a big problem on just the visuals the game provides.

The second thing that I've gleaned from you arguments is that when you play this game you play it the same way for each race and do not adapt to that races special and unique abilities. Since you say they play the same this is the only conclusion I can come too. The point of design is that the game should be able to be played with any one particular style and you can win, but it is easier with some factions than others. Also, the good vs. evil I see Pariden as evil and Capitar as Evil. but they are Kingdoms, read the faction backstories here. Each item in the game has a description and some actually have a backstory as well with depth. Spend some time in the Heirgamenon. This lore is new and in it's infancy and thus would seem shallow until it has time to grow roots, which will take more years than Stardock has spent on this game.